Food, cooking and nutrition links

One of the toughest things about using the Internet to learn about food, cooking and nutrtion — for me anyway — is just being able to stop.

Or looking up only the thing I’m seeking, and resisting the temptation of a million tantalizing avenues of exploration as they pop up. “If I don’t look now, I’ll never remember to come back,” I think. “Or even if I remember, how will I ever find this again?”

There is so, so much fantastic stuff put out by so many knowledgeable and passionate folks, working on their own or as part of larger organizations. It’s thrilling to live at a time when there’s a platform for so many creative and well-informed perspectives. I’ve assembled some food, cooking and nutrition links to share with you. These are just a few of my longtime favorites

Uncle Phaedrus bills itself as “Consulting detective and finder of lost recipes, with the Hungry Browser Irregulars.” The logo features a Holmes-type character, with iconic pipe and deerstalker hat, in silhouette. Note that bubbles, not smoke, emanate from the pipe. Got a recipe mystery? Write to Uncle Phaedrus — he’s been taking cases since at least 2000.

Nourished Kitchen is beautiful, densely informative, and fun. It’s not often that you get all those three together on one website. Jenny’s real-food philosophy is very close to my own, and her site is rich with her passion for sustainable agriculture, traditional foods, home ferments and more.

General Food Info

The Food Section is a good-looking site that’s frequently updated with news and features about cooking, food, dining and wine. As its name suggests, it feels kinda like the food section of a newspaper. A really good food section in a really good newspaper.

Real-Food and/or Low-Carb Perspectives

Lowcarbarama.blogspot.com is another website from me, Vesna. It’s where I like to share news items of special interest and rant about them.

Adventures in Diet by Vilhjalmur Stefansson, Harper’s Magazine, 1935, reprinted on the Pinch of Health website. Stefansson, an explorer, lived with the Inuits and for years shared their nearly all-fish-and-meat diet, virtually free from any carbohydrate. This lengthy article goes into detail about his experiences with Inuit culinary culture, and his year-long urban all-meat experiment, which was conducted by a team of researchers from institutions including Harvard, Johns Hopkins and the University of Chicago.

Gary Taubes has been writing and speaking about what he’s learned from his decade-long survey of the past hundred years of nutritional theory and research. In a nutshell, he discovered that public policy and mainstream headlines tend to diverge from actual scientific findings. At his website, you can read his blog and find out about his books and articles.

Real Food Media features a curated selection of short films about farm-to-table cooking, food advocacy and more. Learn about the Real Food Media film contest with top-tier judges like Padma Lakshmi, Tom Collichio and Anna Rodale.

Livin’ La Vida Low-Carb blog is essential reading for anyone interested in restricted-carbohydrate nutrition for health and weight loss. Since around 2005, no one has been more active than blogger and podcaster Jimmy Moore in the movement to get the word out, bringing together scientists, doctors, nutritionists, fitness professionals writers and others.

Deconstructing Dinner was an award-winning Canadian radio show also available to hear as a podcast. For several years beginning in 2006 the weekly broadcast featured over 200 mind-blowing, intricately crafted shows on issues that matter to everyone who lives and eats on Planet Earth, covering topics like GM (genetically modified) livestock and agriculture, organics, sustainable agriculture, agribusiness, transnational food corporations and more. It’s still available on many podcast directories, and the website. Turn on your brain, tune in, and get ready to be informed — and, often, shocked.

Low-Carb and Paleo Discussion Groups

Are you wondering what the fuss is over restricted-carbohydrate dietary approaches? Would you like to engage in actual conversations with people who’ve been researching, thinking about and following the lowered-carb lifestyle for years? Find lively colloquy at these venues.

Low Carb Friends Bulletin Boards was active for many, many years. It’s hard to overstate how central it was to the low-carb movement that started around the turn of the century with growth of widespread access to the Internet. It went offline in 2018.